


As The Battle Rages On

by winter_scldier



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Depression, M/M, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-21 21:52:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9568415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_scldier/pseuds/winter_scldier
Summary: He watched with glossy eyes as the blood dripped from his wrist, staining the clean sheets crimson. But this wasn't the first time, and it most certainly wouldn't be the last.





	1. Glass

_It was nearly three in the morning when James Buchanan Barnes would attempt to take his own life for the first time. He would be sitting on the sofa, watching his favorite movie, and tears pouring from his eyes. He would look at the clear piece of glass between his mechanical fingers, contemplating weather or not to drag it across his flesh._

_James Barnes would watch the blood run from the fresh wound, roll down his arm. He felt numb, almost as a pain had lifted away. But what he would not realize is that the pain would return, and it would be twice as worse as before. It would tear him apart, and he would drive it away. Every time it would return, the blood would flow from his wrist._

_It would continue until he could hide his scars no longer. Until Steve Rogers would grow suspicious, and roll up his sleeve to reveal the seemingly endless scars lining his forearm. The two men would stand silently, tears flowing from their eyes. But each man would have a different reason._

It had been almost a year when Steve caught me. It was mid summer, and I had been walking around in a long sleeve shirt almost every day. He always told me that I would overheat if I didn't put on cooler clothes, but I would always just give him the same excuse; that it was what I was comfortable in. 

I guess one day I had made it too obvious I was hiding something. He said he was going to make a deal with me. He told me that he would take me out to eat at the restaurant I liked down the street if I promised to wear something different. He held out his hand for me to shake after I reluctantly agreed, and as I went to shake it, he harshly pulled up my sleeve, revealing all of my scars. 

He held onto me firmly, as if he thought I would flee. But I stood there, tears welling in my eyes. An extreme wave of guilt washed over me, and I collapsed to my knees in agony. Steve still stood there, his gaze frozen on the wounds. I heard him mutter something, and all of a sudden I felt something fall onto my arm. 

_He was crying._

I had vowed to myself that I wouldn't hurt him. I would do my damnedest to make sure he would never be up late at night, rocking himself back and forth in guilt over something he couldn't control, like I spent years doing. But I failed. 

"Please Steve...." I begged. "Please say something."

As the tears fell to my flesh, each one felt like a bullet, piercing through me and into my conscience. I broke him, and I didn't know how to fix him. 

"Is there anymore?" He asked, his voice hardly anything more than a whisper. He looked up, and asked me again, harsher this time. It terrified me. "N-no," I stuttered. But I could tell he didn't believe me. He asked to see my legs, and I didn't argue. 

He found nothing, and that seemed to relive him somewhat. He led me to the bathroom, still grasping my hand tightly, and wrapped my arm in a thick layer of gauze and medical tape. He watched me like a hawk for months. I was almost never alone. He would be up all night making sure I didn't leave my bedroom. He didn't rest until he knew I was asleep. 

_I ruined him._


	2. Razor Blade

_There were days I wanted to die more than anything. I would be sitting on my bed, staring at my healing scars, wondering why I was still there._

_**I deserve to be executed. I deserve to hang.** _

_Steve did everything he could to make sure I couldn't hurt myself. He hid every knife and razor blade, locked away every medication so I could only take it under his supervision, and made sure I was totally asleep before going to sleep in the room right next door._

_I had broken his trust, and I hated myself for it._

He would continuously wrap a thick layer of gauze around my forearm just to make sure I couldn't hurt myself. But sometimes the urges would become so strong, and my will to live dropped so low, that I would hack try to hack through he bandages until the urge disappeared. When Steve would find it the next morning, he would give me this look of extreme disappointment before wrapping a layer twice as thick. 

He tried to get me into hobbies. He would take me to the gym to workout with him, but people would always stare at me, terrified. If they didn't think I was a terrorist, they would back away when they saw my metal hand from under my sleeve. 

I know what happened to me was beyond my control, but that didn't stop me from regretting every last second of it. I remember the names of all my victims, and I remember most of their faces. Most were young and innocent men. Some had a wife and kids at home, and I went and slaughtered them all. They would call for their partners, or to God. But it didn't matter. They would die at my hands, and I remembered every single one. 

Steve would always tell me it was my Post-Traumatic Stres Disorder that made my want to die everyday, and I knew he was probably right. He wanted to take me to a doctor to officially diagnose me, but I would always refuse. I'd had enough of doctors doing things to me. 

It was late one night and I passed Steve's room in the way to the bathroom. As I passed his door, I heard him sobbing. I felt my whole body collapse next thing I know, I was ok the ground, my whole body convulsing. I heard Steve urgently opening his door, and next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital.


	3. Seizures

They didn't really know how to explain what happened to me. They thought when I heard Steve, it triggered a reflex from the beginning of my time as a Prisoner of War. Some of them thought we were just lucky my outburst caused me to slip into emotional distress rather than triggering my "terroristic behaviors". 

_It was only after that I realized how easily I could've killed someone. How easily my mind could've gone into attack mode, and I would've put everyone around me in danger. If I had to watch another human being die, and I couldn't stop myself...I would lose every ounce of humanity I had reclaimed. I would be nothing. I would be dead._

I could physically feel the guilt radiating off of Steve. But I couldn't blame him. I wondered how often he would sit in his room like that, praying for everything to be alright again. I wondered how many times he felt like the biggest failure in the world, all because he couldn't fix me. 

_I wished I could make it better for the both of us. I wished that I had never been captured and experimented on._

_**I wish they would've killed me.** _

Only God knows why I was the one they chose to experiment on, and not any of the other men in my division. If I had the choice of being _changed_ and surviving the fall and becoming the most wanted man across nations, or dying, I would be thirty-two years old, and lying dead in the valley between the mountains. 

I would be alright with my body withering away, broken and bleeding, between the mountains, if it meant other got to live. If innocent people weren't brutally murdered because of me. 

But it doesn't matter what I want. It hasn't for the past seventy years, and it won't ever again. 

Over the course of three weeks, I had almost six seizures caused by emotional distress. My own mind was turning against me, to the point where I couldn't tell what was real anymore. I would see Steve sitting on the floor, watching blood drip onto the tile beneath him with a razor in his hand, just like I used to do. In my mind I would scream for a nurse, but in reality, I was dying. 

I was so weak after that. I needed to be on oxygen, I was on multiple anti-seizure medications, and could hardly move. I wasn't desperate to be held in Steve's arms again, but part of me thought it wouldn't happen again. I knew there was a high chance I wouldn't make it another year with the rate my seizures kept occurring, and how weak I was after only a few weeks. 

Steve knew it too. He always looked anxious when he thought I wasn't looking. Everytime he spoke to a doctor that was in my field of vison, he looked devastated by the end of the conversation. I think in the end, nobody thought I would last much longer. 

As the days counted down, I thought I was ready to die. I was ready to throw my life away and face the devil. But I was terrified. I found myself praying a lot during the coming weeks. I begged for my forgiveness, pleaded for God to forgive me for the actions I could not control. 

One Sunday, I saw Steve in the hallway outside my room with his head in his hands. His body would convulse in sobs, and that told me everything I needed to know.


	4. Scars

Steve spent nearly every moment of his time with me after talking to my doctor one morning. He wouldn't tell me why, but part of me always knew. I couldn't talk anymore, and could hardly move. I wanted so desperately to tell him that I loved him, and to apologize for all the trauma I placed upon him. 

_But I couldn't. I'd never be able to again._

Despite all of my medications, I still had seizures. One afternoon, Steve was holding my hand and recalling memories from our lives before the war. There was suddenly a shooting pain in my head, and I felt my whole body convulse. It was one of my few episodes that wasn't accompanied by a hallucination, and it terrified me. I could feel people trying to sedate me, but it didn't seem to work. 

Finally, it settled down. After what felt like hours of thrashing and convulsing, I heard the somewhat steady beat of the heart monitor slowing down again. I heard Steve's cries from the hallway as I slowly regained consciousness, and I watched him collapse in agony. 

I was a mess. My hair was matted to my forehead, and my clothes clung to my body. I had come down with an extremely high fever, and we all knew I wasn't going to make it back from that. 

As I lied on my hospital bed, waiting to die, I wondered what would've happened had I not left for the battle field. What would've happened to me if I had been hit by a car, or caught the flu, just before I was to be deployed. 

_I could've died a normal man. I could've died, surrounded by my family, like a normal person always did. I could've been **normal.**_

It was in the early hours of Wednesday, December 20th, that Steve walked into my room, his eyes brimming with tears. He was wearing a mask to protect himself from my infection, but that didn't help choke back his sobs. I was so weak, and we all knew I wouldn't live another day. 

"I guess we won't be spending this holiday season together," he said quietly. He was desperatly trying to hide the devistation in his voice, and all I could do was weakly shake my head. 

He pulled his mask down, and kissed me. I slowly raised my hand, and brushed the stray hairs off his face. His tears dripped onto my shirt, and through his sobs I heard;

_"Dear God please don't leave me. I'm sorry I was weak when you needed me strong. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry._

I wanted so desperatly to tell him that it wasn't his fault. He couldn't control me walking by his room that night. He couldn't control how depressed I really was. But he did the best he could, and I couldn't even tell him that. 

We both heard he heart monitor slowing down, and we both started crying harder than we had before. He wrapped his arms around me, and begged for me to stay. He promised he'd make everything better, that he'd make sure I'd be alright. 

It took all my strength, but I whispered my final words into his ear. 

_I love you...so much._


End file.
